Welcome to the Supocalypse
He didn’t dream but he did remember. Philadelphia: called the City of Brotherly Love. He was walking along South Street. The crashed cars and corpses littering the sidewalks and doorways clashed terribly with the reputed bohemian atmosphere. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the strong winds were warm but carried the nauseating scent of death. The howl of car alarms and the occasional scream of something more/less than human cracked the glassy silence of a dead city. '' '' His head throbbed like it would split open and some new life form would come crawling out. He never knew what several thousand corpses smelled like. She wasn’t amongst them; he could pick her out of a crowd alive and/or dead. Green eyes like hers (somewhere in the spectrum of jade and spring grass) could not be glanced over. His apartment, the boxy little home he shared with her for those few months, it was still standing within the city. He just had to reach it and find her within. '' '' Christ, they looked like they were pretending to be dead, like they were extras in a disaster movie and any moment now the director would come out behind a corner and yell “Cut!” and they’d all get up and go about their day. Then he realized that the giant pile of black garbage bags was a person so bloated with muscle that his legs dangled sideways off his bulk. It moaned in agonized pain as he approached. A dozen bodies were awash in a mucus-like fluid spraying from the hole in the stomach of a dead woman lying on her side. Further down the street there was a flickering silhouette shambling amongst the corpses. In the distance people were screaming. '' '' A desire to be higher carried him into the air. In five seconds he rose over buildings and treetops and glided towards Center City. He had been looking down at the lattice of intersecting streets and buildings spliced with corpses and randomized chaos. Northward he could see thick plumes of smoke rising into the air as several buildings burned, no doubt the result of riotous panic and despair. Never was he so aware of how many people there were in this city than now that they were all dead. Would he have to dig through the bodies? '' '' This had been necessary. '' '' The thought was a fragile shield but he clung to it nonetheless. '' '' Crashed cars twisted around each other glittered beneath him like beetles mating. He saw at least forty twisted little bodies amongst the carnage. This had been '''necessary'. The early version of the Virus he had been injected with was necessary and the lab accident that had empowered the impotent strain was unexpected but yielded results. There was no fate. He should have died like them but the bombardment of elementary particles to his being changed him in a manner like any other, was changing him still in a long and painful metamorphosis-'' '' '' Speak of the Devil. Pain shot through him and he dropped four stories out of the air and hit the ground with the corner of his face. It was the last time he would ever bleed. The wet smack of his body hitting the asphalt was more surprising that the physical pain. He willed the ground to be softer beneath him and suddenly part of the street turned to dust as its molecular structure collapsed, forming a pit that pulled '''severalbodiesdownontopofhim.' Oh.'' '' '' No. '' '' Their. '' '' EYES. He scrambled to climb out of the self-made sand trap, deliriously pulling on clumps of dust for leverage as the bodies set to burning behind him. Dead people with dead eyes burning in a hole in the ground. Getting away was good, was necessary. '' '' He had to find her. He was close now he knew this street he had lived here. One of the others had come to him on this very street, propositioning to him the interests of their group. Dead bodies were on the pavement instead. She wasn’t dead like them. '' '' He staggered down the street in a lopsided jog trying to get to her as fast as he could. The triple threat of the odious scent of death, pain, and delirium made him want to vomit but his digestive system was slowly becoming unnecessary and that frightened him even more. '' '' The apartment, HIS apartment, sat at the end of the street. He staggered to it like a man dying of thirst in a desert seeing an oasis. Just cross this sand dune and he’d quench his thirst. Just reach the end of the street and she’d be there. '' '' It was in front of him now. He climbed the same three steps to the stoop that was always there but he didn’t have his key. How stupid of him! '' '' “Catherine…” he croaked, hand pressed against the frame of the storm door. '' '' BAM BAM BAM! No answer. “Catherine! Cat, it’s Neil!” BAM BAM BAM! “CAT!” BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM he seized the handle and the entire door began to slacken as it was superheated until the aluminum glowed orange and he wrenched it off the door frame and tossed it into the street. He clumped inside as fast as his feet would allow him. The lights were off save for the one in the room at the end of the hall. The was something in there that he could see through the doorway: a leg in a shoe and the hem of a sundress he couldn’t see the rest it couldn’t be her it He was awake. He was two meters above the couch that he had… fallen asleep on. Neil had been working and the knocking was getting worse so he came in here. The doctor stretched out his arm and pulled his helmet to him. The visors and lights and wires on it were inert without him to funnel his damaging excess energies into it. For a few seconds he looked at it; it was very solid and heavy. When he donned it there was a staccato of mechanical clicks and the hiss of pressure as it sealed on his head. When it hummed with energy he glided himself downward and rotated so his feet could settle firmly on the ground. It was a new day, and that thought filled him with a bit of hope. For no reason he looked up. Catherine was looking back down at him. His head whipped downward as he averted his gaze. The exhaustion really had caught up to him if he was seeing her again; he had almost made eye contact with her. She was leaning against a bookshelf across from him now. “What’s on your mind handsome?” she asked in the Queen’s English. From under his brow and through the visor he could see she was still wearing that yellow and white sundress and a pair of simple flats. Professionally she would dress like a stylish CFO, but she knew Neil had always loved her in this dress. If Neil’s gaze went higher he would see the raven black hair that came to just below her chin and those ever-so-slight dimples. He didn’t risk it. Saying nothing, he raised his arms and folded back the wall that separated his library from his lab. The metal walls wrinkled as he pried open the new entranceway. “Hey, you in there Doctor?” She asked sweetly. “You haven’t gone all barmy on me have you?” Tremors looped up and down his body and raced to the tips of his extremities. So badly did he want to crush her against him, cradle her in his arms and believe that she was really there. He had to stop thinking of this, he needed to get back to work. Perhaps today he would work on some of his experiments in studying dark matter. She was at his side now. “You know the silent treatment never works on me, numbskull. Out of the furthest corner of his helmet Neil could make out the edge of her sweet smile. Her dainty hand reached out to touch him. He spoke softly, turning his head a fraction of an inch towards her and being careful not to look. “You need to go.” She dropped her hand and smiled softly, and then he was alone. Neil’s arms dropped to his sides and he stared at where she had been standing for a long moment. BAM BAM BAM! An alarm started to go off within the sphere, originating from the amalgamation of computers and flat-screen monitors in the center of his lab. Neil hovered over to the supercomputer, not bothering to sit in the black computer chair at the desk. His guards were engaging something that stepped into the border town, something that was very big. The robots he built were falling like flies to the thing and he would have to go outside if he wanted it taken care of. Neil had last seen the sun almost two weeks ago. He rose through the forest of machinery and cables until he came to the outermost shell of his giant floating science sphere. With a poke of his mind he stabbed a hole in the surface and then stretched it until a truck could drive through it. Blue sky formed a stark contrast to the darkness of within his strange abode, and Neil flew out into the sunlight to see what the Supocalypse had decided to challenge him with. End Part Two